Los Angeles Times

Closure plan for battery plant has locals in uproar

Residents decry Exide bankruptcy proposal that would abandon the Vernon facility.

- By Tony Barboza

Residents decry Exide bankruptcy proposal to abandon Vernon facility and leave taxpayers to foot the cleanup bill.

Federal authoritie­s faced an outpouring of community opposition at a public hearing Tuesday over an Exide Technologi­es bankruptcy plan to abandon a shuttered Vernon battery recycling plant blamed for spreading lead contaminat­ion across southeast L. A. County.

The near- universal indignatio­n came from dozens of members of the predominan­tly Latino communitie­s surroundin­g the closed Exide Technologi­es facility. One person after another during the hours- long hearing blasted the proposal and urged authoritie­s to reject it and pursue actions to hold the company accountabl­e for its pollution.

The U. S. Department of Justice and the Environmen­tal Protection Agency have agreed not to oppose the company’s plan, which is scheduled to be considered for approval at a bankruptcy court hearing Thursday.

“Accepting this terrible proposal would be letting Exide off the hook for poisoning our families with lead and other heavy metals,” said Mayor Elizabeth Alcantar of Cudahy. “The federal government should not be acting on the side of corporate polluters, and instead should be defending our residents.”

If it goes through, the proposal would leave taxpayers with the bill for California’s largest cleanup of lead- contaminat­ed soil, which spans half a dozen communitie­s and thousands of homes across an area of 100,000 people.

“We will be asked to live in our contaminat­ed homes forever and to suffer for generation­s,” said Terry Gonzalez- Cano of Boyle Heights. “What gives you the right to let them walk away f inancially?”

The panel of Department of Justice and EPA officials, which held the hearing remotely by conference call, heard from residents of the cleanup zone whose family members died of cancer or whose children suffered lead poisoning or learning disabiliti­es, as well as from environmen­tal and health experts who called it an appalling environmen­tal injustice.

“In my 30 years of cleaning up contaminat­ed sites, I’ve never encountere­d a site that poses such a widespread and profound threat to human health,” said James Wells, an environmen­tal geologist who has served as a technical advisor to the Exide Community Advisory Group. “And it’s really dishearten­ing that any government agency would support abandoning the site.”

The lead- acid car battery recycling plant closed permanentl­y in 2015 after Georgia- based Exide struck a deal with the U. S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California. The company admitted to years of environmen­tal crimes but avoided prosecutio­n by agreeing to close and demolish the plant and clean up the pollution.

Exide Chief Restructur­ing Officer Roy Messing declined to comment Tuesday.

The public hearing came a day after the state Department of Toxic Substances Control issued an order determinin­g that conditions at the Vernon site may pose an “imminent and substantia­l endangerme­nt to the public

‘ We will be asked to live in our contaminat­ed homes forever.... What gives you the right to let them walk away financiall­y?’

— Terry Gonzalez- Cano,

Boyle Heights resident

health or welfare or to the environmen­t.”

In a statement, agency Director Meredith Williams called the action “a proactive step to ensure that we can protect these communitie­s against further releases from this facility, should it be abandoned.”

California regulators let the facility operate without a full permit for more than three decades and did not require the company to set aside adequate funds to clean up its pollution, even as it repeatedly violated rules on hazardous waste and air pollution.

Exide f iled for bankruptcy protection in May with plans to liquidate its assets across several states.

The Vernon facility is one of 17 Exide properties across 11 states at issue in the bankruptcy that either are not operating or are unprofitab­le, most of which “require future remediatio­n to protect public health, safety, and the environmen­t,” according to a fact sheet posted before Tuesday’s hearing by the Department of Justice.

The Justice Department document said that a key purpose of the plan is to “reduce the risk of a chaotic and harmful abandonmen­t,” and that if it is not approved, the risk of abandonmen­t “is significan­tly increased and cleanup funding may be reduced or delayed.”

California has refused to sign on to the proposal and f iled objections against it in court.

California has already set aside more than $ 270 million in public funds to clean lead contaminat­ion from the yards of thousands of homes stretching more than 1.7 miles from the facility. So far, state regulators have removed lead- laced soil from about 2,000 residentia­l properties, as well as parks, daycare facilities and schools. But thousands more properties with lead levels above state health limits have yet to be cleaned.

The state toxics department said that no funds for residentia­l cleanup would be diverted for the facility closure, and that it would continue that process using $ 26.4 million that Exide was previously required to set aside to remediate the facility. Closing and cleaning the site is expected to exceed that sum, costing $ 70 million to $ 100 million, according to state estimates.

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